New York and I have decided to see other people- I Love (French)Bread too

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Charles de Gaulle said "How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese ?" but when it comes to bread everyone in France, and even its loyalty islands like Noumea agree-there’s only one, Baguette, We call it French Bread, but all the bread in Nouvelle-Calédonie is French.

Sure the whiter the bread, the quicker you’re dead, but there is this thing called the French Paradox-basically you have a grace period for your entire life where you can drink,eat smoke whatever and whenever you like, and then one day, you die peacefully in your sleep at the age of eighty-to ninety something.

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Pig Farming In The Tropics (Fiji)

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The D word-diets are like airplanes- I don't like to be on them-so I have been eating less and enjoying it more. I have even began eating Ham and Eggs--: a days work for a chicken; a life time commitment for the pig. Inspired by my recent visit to the island of Dravuni where I really did "Meet My Meat".

The archipelago located in the South Pacific known as New Caledonia is part of the "confetti" of the French colonial empire. What a great day today.

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“I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting.”" Tales of the South Pacific" by James A. Michener

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Powder---The Book is better than the movie but a picture is worth a 1000 words.

You know, addiction isn't the problem - it's the solution- When all you care about is here, this is a good place to be

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“Addicted to traveling” or for that matter “Addicted to all-non working activities” shouldn’t be a new reason for self-hatred or a diagnosis, rather a pursuit like the arts and entertainment, that permit self-exploration and satisfy your psycho-social needs. ﻿﻿﻿You see, in general, if a pastime is not classy, those who love it are labeled with the Dr Phil-Drew-Oprah Psycho Babble rhetoric of “addict.” Opera and Symphony aficionados, on the other hand are “passionate” and "driven".

Loading the cultural dice in favor of “reality” over fantasy, we get the sense of adventure beaten out of us when we ask ourselves the most irritating of the question words, “Why?” Why do I have to live in the New York suburbs,where the weather sucks and the people are rude, and there is nothing to do? Then we just tune in turn on the TV, and drop out, watching one of the 1000 channels in a shared hallucination called the superstition of materialism, and fall asleep.

Then you get "The Call" and if you wake up and answer it, and you begin the Hero's Journey that Joseph Cambell talks about in The Power Of Myth, with Bill Moyers, that PBS video series that's a must for all seekers, and you follow your bliss-in most cases your bliss follows you.

I started to travel, as a pastime, on a shoe-string budget, labeled as a drifter, a bum, held in contempt by the uninformed, and over educated who find themselves sinking into the everydayness of their lives. And I didn’t care. I just did it anyway. The Calvinists say work is prayer, so is permanent traveling.

In the old days, habits of cultural consumption like listening to jazz music all day and night were considered passions, or forever going to the movies or “The Theatre”, allowing us to create new personalities and use them to fulfill unmet psychological needs. Come to think of it, I think I have an internet addiction too! Awesome.

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Seagull Management

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We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” Anais Nin

Fiji has over 300 islands- I have seen about 25 so far this trip. I'm concerned that "the wow factor" no longer applies. Yet if I take an imaginary a ride down Southern California's Carmageddon- Interstate 405, breath in some smog while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I still want to escape to MY reality--being in the South Pacific! I love the Free Parking for all boats, ships and anything that floats.

The Law of Diminishing Returns is the theory that the more your experience something, the less effective it becomes. Think of the drug addict that needs more and more drugs, just to achieve the same high.

Beyond that point, more and more gains in any one particular area adds less and less to happiness.So in a sense, you can have too much of a good thing. The more you experience of the good thing, your overall happiness will decline.

I am needing a larger and larger DOSES of paradise-Bora Bora, Moorea, now Fiji---to get the same feeling I had when I simply visited Europe or even Canada. It's STILL working!

﻿Ah Suva!, from sea you looks so promising, despite the oil slick (right), but in town, it looks like paradise has committed suicide. I thought cyclone season was over.

This is like if that Biggie Smalls rapper met the Afghan Kush,and they had a baby.

Many are cold but few are frozen

I don’t take issue with being the Morgan Freeman of travel bloggers, never getting the due respect I deserve. After all,“Sweet dreams are made of these-traveled the world and the seven seas”---this isas huge in a Lebron James but as annoying in a Rob Lowe sort of way.

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Meet Your Meat

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“Ed Reif is the Wilt Chamberlin of the high seas, putting up ports of call numbers so high that mere tourist could never come close.” Ed’s Mom Maria Reif

It is what it is yet my definition of is makes me feel like the Tupac of Paradise’s Found to the extent that I’m expected to come up with fresh new ideas about the same places I have visited after they have long been cryogenically frozen in world wide web oblivion of this blog.

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This recent South Pacific run, theTahitian Treasure28 days voyage , went on a cocaine binge today,jacked a Benz and crashed into a pole. That’s bad, right?The Fiji Islands are nothing more than the Paris Hilton of paradises, not the best looking but certainly the most photographed for travel brochures.

On the other hand, Bora Bora is so amazing that I want to shelter it so it can live a normal island style life, away from the paparazzi. I want French Polynesia’sBora Bora to be the Suri Cruise of islands. Bora Bora H. Christ should be a common exclamation. Get on it humanity!